


Amended

by hiraethwinchesters



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Crying Sam, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Original Character(s), Sam has Nightmares, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-13
Updated: 2017-04-13
Packaged: 2018-10-18 09:38:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10614240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hiraethwinchesters/pseuds/hiraethwinchesters
Summary: Dean tries to help Sam, who's grieving over Jess' death, but Sam's not the little brother he used to be.A little hurt/comfort scene set in the days between 1x01 and 1x02





	

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: First one shot I've written in a while, so please bear with me.  
> Feedback of any kind is always welcome!  
> Thanks to the lovely radioactivedean (Tumblr) for beta'ing :)

_"We made a hell of a team back there…” He’d sensed his brother’s hope. He was trying to convince him to go with him and search for dad. But he had to be at that interview, it was the opportunity of a lifetime. Still, something nagged at the back of his mind as he walked inside. He’d been surprised when his brother showed up, and okay, maybe a little angry. Did he seriously have to break into his house?! But as the words about dad’s hunting trip left his brother’s mouth, he knew that he had to go with him. It spiked something inside him. Made him feel more alive than he’d felt since he had settled down at Stanford._  
_He smiled a little as he saw the cookies Jess had set out for him. He loved her with his whole heart. Tasting one of the cookies he felt a calmness settle in his body, he was home._ This was his home _. He had almost convinced himself of it as he lay down on his bed, still fully clothed, but too tired to change before going to sleep. Suddenly he felt something drip on his forehead. As he opened his eyes he saw Jess, pinned to the ceiling, just like his mother had been. He tried to scream, but nothing came out of his mouth… He was waiting for the flames because he knew they were inevitable. But Jess just kept staring at him from the ceiling, a look in her eyes that conveyed betrayal._ You knew this was going to happen. You knew and you did nothing. Selfish bastard _. His eyes stung as he kept looking at her. He couldn’t move, couldn’t scream, couldn’t do anything but watch and cry._ Jess, I’m sorry _echoed in his head for the millionth time as his girlfriend was engulfed in flames, right before his eyes._

Sam gasped as he sat up in his bed. He looked to his left immediately, checking if he didn’t wake Dean up again, but he looked sound asleep. Sam sagged against the headboard as he wiped a hand across his face. Every night he had the same dream, some nights even up to four or five times. It drained him just as much as it drained his brother. The first two nights Dean had kept watch and every time Sam as much as moved in his sleep, he’d woken him up and checked if he was okay. It had started working on Sam’s nerves though. With Dean watching him like that he was never in time to conceal his emotions. It frustrated him because he didn’t want to be the ‘weak ass little brother’ Dean still saw him as. In the end, Sam finally convinced Dean that it was better if Dean stopped hovering and they both just went to sleep. Sam thought back to the endless nights he’d spent alone with Dean in motel rooms. How they would always huddle up together if one of them wasn’t feeling well. He smiled at the memory, remembering how safe he’d felt with Dean then. Now nothing felt safe. After what happened to Jess, Dean had offered to drive 16 hours straight to get as far away from Stanford as possible, but Sam couldn’t do that. So they rented a room in a motel twenty minutes from there. He felt obliged to try and find something, _anything_ , that could lead them to the thing that killed Jess and his mother. _Killed_ … It sounded so… surreal. It had just always been a fact for him that his mother had been killed. He’d never known her, so he couldn’t really miss her. Of course he’d missed having a mother figure in his life sometimes. Like the time he wanted to ask a girl out for the first time but had absolutely no idea how to do it. He didn’t dare to ask Dean, because it would’ve made him look stupid and dad would’ve just gone on another rant as to why he couldn’t bind himself to one place. He’d seen his friends enjoy spending time with their mother when he was younger. He’d seen Dean looking over at them with a wistful look in his eyes as they walked off the schoolyard, on to their happy families. He had suddenly realized that his brother had some actual memories with their mother and was jealous of these kids. Sam had never really been jealous, just curious as to what it would have been like. That afternoon he started asking Dean questions, but the only answer he ever got was _“Shut it, little brother.”_ He had stopped asking after that. But Jess… She was someone he had so many memories with. He’d wanted to ask her to _marry_ him for God’s sake!

He angrily wiped at his face as he realized that he had started crying. He could never have helped his mother when she died, but he could have done something for Jess. If he’d just not been so stupid, so selfish, she might have still been alive. But of course he couldn’t tell Dean, because he’d just make up another stupid excuse as to why Sam wasn’t to blame. But he was. And it intensified his grief and guilt to an unbearable level. Sam decided to get out of bed and headed towards the bathroom. When he came back Dean was miraculously still asleep, or pretending really well to be. He sighed, wondering if he should lay back down or go for a walk. Eventually he decided to go with the latter and quickly wrote a note to Dean, saying where he’d be going. He quietly grabbed his jacket of the hanger and slipped outside. The cold morning air slapped against his face as he descended the three small stairs that led to the parking lot. He smiled sadly as he walked past the Impala and put his hand briefly on the hood. They’d driven it back to Stanford yesterday to try and find something that could help them to locate the thing that was responsible. They had found nothing so far. It frustrated him. There should be something out there that was an indicator for what had happened. Something that could lead them in the right direction…

There was only one place that Sam knew around here that could calm him enough to get his head back on straight for the day. The lake was close to the motel and even though it was cold, the sky was clear so he was pretty sure it wouldn’t start raining anytime soon. Dean would find him if he got worried or anything. For now, though, Sam just wanted to be alone. It was good to have Dean by his side when he needed it. He provided enough distraction for Sam to get through the day without breaking down, but as soon as they were inside that motel room Dean turned into a mother hen. He was constantly checking up on him, asking him how he was doing, what music he wanted to listen to, if he wanted the tv on or off, if he wanted to shower first, what he wanted to eat… Sam knew that he meant well, but it was all a little too much at the moment. He needed rest, without having to worry about waking up with a concerned Dean by his side. As he got to the lake he took a moment to let the view register. It looked beautiful in the November morning light and he sat down on the grass, leaning back a little while resting on his hand, his feet stretched out in front of him.

 _“Jess, I know I should have done something… God, knows how much I regret everything. But I thought that if I ignored the dreams, maybe they’d just go away… I’m so sorry, Jess. Please forgive me…” Jess is standing in front of him, in her white nightgown. She doesn’t look angry but he’s convinced she’s disappointed._  
_“Sam, you knew they weren’t just dreams. Don’t fool me like that. You were just too afraid to do anything about it and too proud to call your brother or father. Maybe they could’ve helped me, because you definitely couldn’t.” He sucks in a breath, stricken by the sudden tightness in his chest and the feeling of panic. He’d thought about calling his brother after the second time he had that dream about Jess. But she was right, he’d been too damn proud to go to his brother for help. And maybe he’d been a bit scared of his reaction. One side of him believed that Dean would’ve dropped everything to come and help him, but a more rational, bigger side of him was sure that his brother would’ve felt too betrayed by Sam leaving him for college to be willing to come over. A faint buzzing sound starts up in his ears and he thinks that maybe he’s going to pass out, while Jess slowly walks away from him, looking back one more time. “I blame you Sam and I will never forgive you.”_

He must have fallen asleep, because he startled awake, still with that tight feeling of panic in his chest, he realized that the buzzing sound had actually been coming from his phone which was lying next to him. He looked at the display and sighed when he saw that, of course, it was Dean calling him. He took a deep breath and tried to sound as composed as possible as he answered with a short ‘Yes?’. As Dean sighed, Sam could hear the tension in his voice as he told him he’d called him four times already. Sam was getting increasingly annoyed as Dean kept going on about keeping an eye on him. He’d left a piece of paper on the table! If he was so worried, he could’ve come to pick him up for God’s sake! He’d wanted to be alone for once. Was that too much to ask? As he said that to Dean he could hear his brother’s tone of voice changing.  
_“Did you have a nightmare again?”_  
“Dean…”  
_“No Sammy, I’m serious. How can I be there for you when you won’t tell me what’s going on?!”_  
“You don’t have to be there for me all the time, Dean! I can do things on my own you know? I survived without you for four years, I don’t need you to babysit me! I’m not your stupid, little brother anymore!” He’d started talking louder and louder until he was almost yelling. He’d thought Dean would go on a rant about how he was just making sure he was okay, but instead of that the line just clicked. Dean had disconnected. Sam let himself fall back on the grass. The cold had seeped into his body by now but he didn’t mind. The soft click he had heard on the phone kept echoing through his head and he closed his eyes in an attempt to stop the tears from flowing over, but he couldn’t do anything about them. Until now he’d been able to get the tears under control fairly quick, wiping them away and being able to act like nothing had happened. But right then he felt like someone had opened a door to reveal a sea of water right behind his eyelids, unable to be stopped from coming out.

He’d heard his brother’s footsteps come up to him long before his long shadow blocked the sunlight from hitting Sam’s face. He had been trying to stop the tears from flowing for the past fifteen minutes but it just wouldn’t work. He turned his head to the side, trying to hide them from Dean. Of course he noticed anyway and sat down on his left side.  
“Y’know Sammy… if you don’t want to talk about it to me, maybe you should talk to someone else. As in someone professional.” Dean’s voice was soft and filled with honest concern. It only made Sam angry and more tears poured out. He swiped at them furiously and sat back up, facing Dean.  
“And tell them _what_ exactly?! Hey, hello there, I just lost my girlfriend. How, you ask? Oh, y’know she was pinned to the ceiling and burned. Nothing new there!” He tried to put in as much sarcasm as he could, but his voice cracked on the last sentence and it just came out sounding broken. Dean looked down, knowing that it wasn’t an option, but trying to provide support for Sam in any way he could.  
“I’m sorry, Sam.” Sam knew he wasn’t just talking about Jess. He was talking about this life, about how they were raised, maybe about how they couldn’t find dad now but mostly about how it had been between them for the last couple of years.  
“Dean, please just leave me alone. I don’t want to talk about it. Not now, not ever. So please just stop and go.” Dean was starting to get up, when he suddenly seemed to change his mind and sat back down, his arms folded in front of his chest loosely. Sam sighed, Dean’s inner ‘big brother’ was coming out.  
“I’m not going to leave you alone. I don’t care if you don’t want to talk, but I can’t wake up every morning to find my brother gone because he feels like he can’t be in one room with me. I want to help you Sam, I really do and I’m _trying_. But I just don’t know how to do this anymore okay?” He was searching Sam’s eyes with an intensity that Sam hadn’t expected to see. He’d thought Dean had just wanted him to talk so he knew why Sam was feeling so guilty, maybe so Dean could fit the pieces together in his head. He had never thought about Dean doing it because he wanted to make _Sam_ feel better. If that wasn’t an indicator of how long they’d been apart, he didn’t know what was. Because Dean always used to do everything for him when they were younger.

“I tried doing what I did when we were little, sitting at your bedside trying to comfort you, trying to get you to talk about it, letting you decide things like food and tv. But it just doesn’t seem to work! I’m out of ideas Sam, you have to help me here. You have to give me something to work with. You don’t have to talk about it, but I need to know how to help you… I want to help you, because it’s what brothers do. It’s what a big brother is supposed to do…”  
Sam sighed. He knew he hadn’t been fair to Dean by not telling him anything, but he just wasn’t ready for it. Though he could tell Dean that he didn’t like being looked after every minute of the day anymore, or that he just wanted Dean to treat him like he wasn’t a bird with a broken wing that had to be nursed back to health, or how he’d like for Dean to wake him up from a nightmare but that he shouldn’t keep hovering after that, just go back to sleep. He couldn’t talk about Jess, but he could tell Dean those things. And maybe that would help. So he did, he told Dean all of the things he could think of that would maybe make Sam feel better but not crowded. When he was finished, he looked up at Dean and saw his brother smiling slightly, glad that he finally had some handles he could hold on to and work with. Sam was suddenly hit by a memory of Jess bringing him tea when he had the flu and it brought a sad smile on his face.

“What is it?” Dean asked, worry creeping back into his voice. He was scared that Sam had regretted telling him all of that stuff and wanted to walk away from him again. Sam was doubting if he should say what was on his mind. He definitely wasn’t going to talk about what happened, but as he tried the words in his head he felt like saying this wouldn’t break him.  
“Jess…” Sam’s voice did catch on that one syllable, but he cleared his throat and tried again. “Jess would always bring me cinnamon tea when I felt sick or worried at night… Said it would calm me down.” Dean felt proud of his little brother for saying that out loud and shifted closer to him, putting his right arm over Sam’s shoulders and pulling him in a little. He was rigid at first, but slowly sagged against Dean more and more. He’d missed having that strong arm around him, providing comfort. He hadn’t allowed himself to be comforted like that by Dean because he was scared of letting himself feel that kind of connection to Dean again. But Dean had said that he wanted to help him and maybe he should just give in to the feeling he’d had ever since Dean had showed up in his apartment. Home.  
“She seems like she was really good for you Sam. I’m glad she was there for you when… when I wasn’t.” Dean tightened his arm around his shoulders and stroked his other hand through Sam’s hair. Suddenly something dawned on Sam and he couldn’t help but smile a little.  
“You’ve actually called me Sam…” He shifted his head that was laying on Dean’s shoulder to look up into his eyes and could see the twinkle in them.  
“Yeah, well… I guess you’re not my stupid, little brother anymore. Maybe now you’re just my stupid, slightly older brother.” Sam laughed for what felt like the first time in forever. He’d missed bantering with his brother. He looked back out over the lake and realized that maybe he’d lost a lot in his life over the years, even Dean, but he promised himself that he would never let go of his brother again.  
“Jerk.” He said to Dean, but there was definitely no heat behind it. He felt Dean throw his head back and laugh, the rumble of it sounding familiar; safe.  
“Bitch.”

And with that, Sam’s healing process began.


End file.
